For the longest time female bodybuilding enthusiasts were cowed down by the cry that ‘women do not belong to bodybuilding’ and ‘it’s a man’s sport’. Even women themselves were of the opinion that bodybuilding was not particularly ‘feminine’ since weights and muscles supposedly didn’t ‘look good’ on women. It took a long long time for this attitude to change and for women in the field to be finally taken seriously.

Today, however a large number of women have managed to successfully break out of this stereotype and taken up bodybuilding and fitness training at a professional level. A variety of women take part in the regular bodybuilding competitions happening all over the country, all of them look ‘feminine’, fit, beautiful and stunning all at once.

Women who want to take up bodybuilding often hesitate about looking ‘manly’, but they couldn’t be further from the truth. A great physique is not necessarily a masculine trait. A number of female bodybuilders are downright beautiful women, in the conventional sense and their built up body has just added to their glamour, not taken anything away. If you exercise consciously and with a well-defined goal you to can preserve you womanly softness despite having developed a bulky body. In fact the entire notion of looking ‘manly’ when gaining muscles is absurd since men and women are structurally different and no woman, no matter how much bulk she manages to add in terms of muscles can possibly look like a man!

This is because men in general have a different stature than women and women almost never become as big as a man regardless of how muscular they may become. Contrary to popular belief bodybuilding has often been known to make women feel more ‘feminine’, a large number of men too find such women particularly attractive. But that apart, bodybuilding is known to augment one’s level of confidence to a large extent.

Women who engage in bodybuilding claim to feel ‘more confident’ and ‘in control’, a feeling that slowly permeates through every aspect of their life.

It doesn’t matter what your particular body type is, you can be slight or big boned, tall or tiny but you’d still be able to reap benefits of bodybuilding. This is because bodybuilding is not the same thing for everyone and different bodies can be built up in different manner. For instance if you are slight begin with small weights instead of heavyweights, which can be harmful for you. However if you are slightly broader and stronger use medium sized weights, which will be far better for you than the small weights used by small framed people.

No matter what your final objective is chances are you’ll find a great little niche within the bodybuilding circle for yourself. The bodybuilding circle has been known to accommodate everyone from the chance amateurs, who is seeking nothing more than a well toned body to a really serious professional who is primarily interested in winning all contests. Gone are the days when female bodybuilders were considered to be shiny young things clad in skimpy little bikinis and therefore ogled at mindlessly. Today female bodybuilding has earned itself the sort of respect every sport desires to.